Jackson just reached Berry in time, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him back up onto the curb. A half-second later, a delivery truck rocketed through the space that Berry would have occupied if Jackson hadn\u2019t have pulled him back from the street.<\/p>\n
\u201cJesus!\u201d Berry exclaimed, shaken. \u201cThat truck could have hit me! How did you know it was coming?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSimple,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cI saw it hit you an hour ago, then I used the time machine I\u2019ve been building in my basement to come back in time to save you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAmazing!\u201d Berry said. \u201cYou built a time machine? That\u2019s truly\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
A thunderous crash of material\u2014bricks and rivets and rebar and a wheelbarrow\u2014smashed down into Berry, having fallen from several stories above them, as the two men were standing next to a building under construction. Berry was instantly pulverized into a splatter of goo and hair gel and bits of smashed cell phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cDammit,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n
Later, Jackson just reached Berry in time, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him back up onto the curb. A half-second later, a delivery truck rocketed through the space that Berry would have occupied if Jackson hadn\u2019t have pulled him back from the street.<\/p>\n
\u201cJesus!\u201d Berry exclaimed, shaken. \u201cThat truck could have hit me! How did you know it was coming?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSimple,\u201d said the second Jackson, putting his arms around Berry from behind and pulling him away from the first Jackson. A thunderous crash of material\u2014bricks and rivets and rebar and a wheelbarrow\u2014smashed down into the space Berry had been standing, cracking the sidewalk and throwing an impressive cloud of concrete dust up into the air.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood Lord,\u201d Berry coughed, dust in his lungs. \u201cThat could have crushed me flat as a bug! How did you do that?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI built a time machine,\u201d said the second Jackson.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo did I,\u201d said the first.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmazing!\u201d Berry said. \u201cYou built a time machine? That\u2019s truly\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Gunfire erupted suddenly, and the window of a nearby bank blew out from the inside. A stray round entered the back of Berry\u2019s skull, rattled around inside for a bit, and dropped him to the ground like a sack of wet flour.<\/p>\n
\u201cCrap,\u201d the second Jackson said.<\/p>\n
Later, Jackson reached Berry just in time, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him back onto the curb, where he was intercepted by the second Jackson, who pulled him back from beneath a tumbling mass of construction material, only to be tackled by the third Jackson, who dropped Berry to the pavement just as the window of a nearby bank blew out, and a bullet passed through the air that had until only a moment before been occupied by Berry\u2019s head.<\/p>\n
\u201cJesus!\u201d Berry exclaimed.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy!\u201d said the first Jackson.<\/p>\n
\u201cStunning!\u201d said the second Jackson.<\/p>\n
\u201cI built a time machine,\u201d said the third Jackson.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmazing!\u201d Berry said. \u201cYou built a time machine? That\u2019s truly\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
The manhole cover Berry was sitting on blasted up into the air, propelled by a geyser of scalding steam. After a forty-foot ride, Berry tumbled off and plummeted to the pavement, landing face-first, scalded red as a lobster, and then being decapitated by the manhole cover as it fell back to the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cShit,\u201d said the third Jackson.<\/p>\n
Later, Jackson reached Berry just in time, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him back onto the curb, where he was intercepted by the second Jackson, who pulled him from beneath a tumbling mass of construction material, only to be tackled by the third Jackson, who dropped Berry to the pavement just as the window of a nearby bank blew out, where he was then pulled by his ankles off the manhole cover he\u2019d landed on just as it blew off into the sky on a geyser of scalding steam.<\/p>\n
\u201cJesus!\u201d Berry exclaimed.<\/p>\n
\u201cInsanity!\u201d said the first Jackson.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnreal!\u201d said the second Jackson.<\/p>\n
\u201cMadness!\u201d said the third Jackson.<\/p>\n
\u201cI built a time machine,\u201d said the fourth Jackson.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmazing!\u201d Berry said. \u201cYou built a time machine? That\u2019s truly\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Berry\u2019s head collapsed in on itself from the force of the baseball bat that cracked down onto his skull, struck from behind by the fifth Jackson, only just arrived from the future. Berry fell, dead before he hit the pavement.<\/p>\n
\u201cGentlemen,\u201d said the fifth Jackson, resting the bat upon his shoulder. \u201cI built a time machine, and I propose that we use it for some far more fruitful purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLike buying stock in Microsoft,\u201d said the fourth Jackson.<\/p>\n
\u201cOr saving John Lennon,\u201d said the third Jackson.<\/p>\n
\u201cOr killing Hitler,\u201d said the second Jackson.<\/p>\n
\u201cOr asking Juliet Beasley to the junior prom,\u201d said the first Jackson.<\/p>\n
\u201cGentlemen!\u201d said the sixth Jackson, just arriving from the future. \u201cI\u2019ve built a time machine, and we must go back and stop ourselves from marrying Juliet Beasley! Apparently, she grows up to be an emasculating she-beast who emotionally cripples us while draining our fortune made from Microsoft stock and selling our share of song rights to all of John Lennon\u2019s recordings from the 1990s!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGood Lord!\u201d said the fifth Jackson.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat about Hitler?\u201d said the fourth Jackson.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid we kill him?\u201d said the third Jackson.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid we at least change the course of history?\u201d said the second Jackson.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore our souls were crushed by a cold and loveless marriage?\u201d said the first Jackson.<\/p>\n
\u201cWorse!\u201d said the sixth Jackson. \u201cHitler actually sublets the loft over our garage like a Nazi Fonzie!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGentlemen!\u201d said the seventh Jackson, arriving from the future in a leather jacket with a swastika emblem on the back, with his hair done up in a greasy pompadour and a tiny brush of a mustache beneath his nose\u2026<\/p>\n
This week\u2019s IndieInk Challenge<\/a> came from Shelley<\/a>, who gave me this prompt: “You travel back in time, to change the outcome of…” I challenged Chimnese<\/a> with the prompt “A roll of film found in a dead man’s closet.”<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jackson just reached Berry in time, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him back up onto the curb. A half-second later, a delivery truck rocketed through the space that Berry would have occupied if Jackson hadn\u2019t have pulled him back from the street. \u201cJesus!\u201d Berry exclaimed, shaken. \u201cThat truck could have hit me! How […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-indieink-stuff"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=308"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315,"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions\/315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}